Munch and pal circled like, dunno, wolves or something, prepared to do whatever to mark our territory at the glossy new Red Oak Cafe. Lunchtime is a crowded hour there. Finding a table is a competitive sport. Icy stares were exchanged. Elbows were thrown. Positions were jostled for.

Soon two women finished their salads, and this is when Munch pounced. (Do wolves pounce? Is that more of a feline thing? Do wolves even circle for that matter, or is it just the vultures? Give us a minute while we call National Audubon.) In any event, we scored a four-top. Physical Therapist Friend of Munch (PTFOM) had recommended the Red Oak, a recent addition to Oakland's lunchtime dining scene, housed in the architecturally notable Iroquois Building, so named because it was built on a plot of Indian graves. (Just kidding about that. Swear to God, they dug up the graves first.) On the walls are the Ghosts of Pittsburgh Past, in the form of decorative, century-old murals that abut the ceiling, above the green-and-orchid paint job.

We think it was orchid. Might have been eggplant, or heliotrope. Cerise?

Red Oak owners Dave Gancy and Kevin Huber traffic in what Munch likes to call "earth fare" -- oatmeal, yogurts, berry smoothies, Nantucket juices, vegetarian wraps, salads and organic soups populate this menu. No particular specialty per se, but enough hippie food to appeal to a crowd of college kids, health-conscious hospital workers and vaguely communist humanities professors. The type of place where you might find your potato chips replaced with, say, stalks of boiled asparagus.

Those familiar with the omnipresent Panera, which we assume is everybody who has ever eaten, will recognize this setup. You can grab some items a la carte, or you can put in a hot order, in which case you take a number and wait.

Here we must report that PTFOM and New Mother Friend of Munch (NMFOM), who joined us shortly later, both ordered the same item, the mesquite turkey sandwich ($6.50). Fairly egregious rookie mistake right there. Worse, Munch ordered the same, a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left is eating. Sorry about that.

It's too bad, too, because there plenty of other sandwiches that Munch would have been willing to try. The Cajun turkey bacon wrap ($7) looks good on paper, and let's face it, the "Hot & Sweet Honey Ham," with pepper jack cheese, banana peppers, red peppers and onions ($6.50) is right in Munch's wheelhouse. The daily blue-plate special, a fish filet with rice pilaf ($7.50), sounded tasty to everybody, but for whatever reason we all gravitated to the mesquite turkey, topped with limp spinach leaves, red pepper hummus and smoked gouda, on toasted wheat bread.

Must have been the hummus.

So it seemed that Munch was destined to submit a pretty half-baked review to the editors, not a unique circumstance, but then we had a last-minute change of heart and ordered a fruit and nut salad ($6.50), recommended by one of the cash register jockeys.

Have you noticed how salads these days are going one of two directions -- either shrinking to the point that you maybe have six salad molecules on your plate, or growing so big that they could have fed the Continental Army for a couple of weeks (yeah, you guessed it, Munch is reading "1776" right now)? Red Oak goes the ginormous route. A heap of lettuce and chopped celery, snuggling with dried apricots, cranberries, pecans, sunflower seeds and those little mandarin orange slices.

Exquisite. Took Munch 20 minutes to finish it. Spilled a little bit of the basalmic vinaigrette on our pants, leaving an oily spot behind, which is pretty much par for the course whenever Munch is wearing nice clothes (sigh). If we're wearing a ratty sweatshirt, no problems. But put Munch in an expensive outfit, and pretty soon we're spilling drinks like a spasmodic Labrador.

Complaints? Service was uneven on this busy Friday. PTFOM, who placed her order just seconds before Munch and NMFOM, got her sandwich immediately, while Munch had to wait for about 10 minutes, putting the well-mannered PTFOM in the awkward spot of having to eat alone while Munch just sat there, drumming the old fingers and watching her chew.

On the bright side, we never did get around to marking our territory. No need to thank us, Red Oak.

Red Oak Cafe, 3610 Forbes Ave., Oakland, redoakusa.com, 412-621-2221, open weekdays 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.